


finis (a tragedy in three acts)

by youllbeadentist



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: (90s movie not the new one btw), Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Coming Out, First Kiss, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Spoilers, Unrequited Love, get ready to die, slightly canon non-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-02-04 06:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12764679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youllbeadentist/pseuds/youllbeadentist
Summary: Eddie makes many attempts to come out throughout his short life. None of them really work.





	1. "there is a light that never goes out"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"And in a darkened underpass, I thought_  
>  'Oh, God, my chance has come at last!'  
> Then a strange fear gripped me  
> And I just couldn't ask"

For better or for worse, one of the only things Eddie Kaspbrak remembered -- _the_ only thing, until Mike’s phone call -- about the summer of 1958 was figuring out he was gay. Kind of a hard thing to forget, he supposed. It was a process; a process some might say he never really finished, but a process nonetheless, with many parts and many misunderstandings. And it began thanks to Buddy Holly.

___

He and Richie Tozier had been down in the Barrens, tired from a summer day of running around and leaning against a tree while Richie’s radio played faintly from its home in the branches. Eddie leaned back against the trunk of the tree, eyes closed happily as he and Richie let the sound wash over them. Derry’s rock and roll station was playing; Richie had a penchant for rock and roll, which Eddie appreciated as his mother loathed the stuff. He could always be sure he’d get his fill when he and Richie hung out. Any other day would have gone without a hitch, with Richie talking Eddie’s ear off about someone-or-other and Eddie listening with wide eyes. But today, though Eddie did not know it yet, was different from any other day. Because the radio was playing Richie’s new break-out favorite star; a little someone by the name of…

“Buddy Holly!” Richie spoke with a wide, gap-tooth grin, scooting closer to Eddie as he waved his hands excitedly. “He’s so cool, right? He just absolutely _kills_ it on that guitar!” Richie broke into an air guitar solo, accompanied by an odd vocal imitation of the instrument’s sound, and Eddie giggled. “...And he wears glasses!” Richie finished his gushing, putting one hand almost unconsciously to the rim of his own taped-up specs. Here Eddie could see, with an almost adult-like clarity, a reasoning behind Richie’s admiration; an odd sort of self consciousness. Richie's smile became vulnerable, emotionally open, and the sight of it filled Eddie with a warmness he could not place. He almost did not hear when Richie spoke again -- “I’ve got his album at my house. And some magazines with him in ‘em too! Wanna come over, Eds?” Eddie grinned despite the nickname; he often could not help but grin when Richie spoke.

“Sure, man. As long as you don’t call me Eds.”

The two of them biked the few blocks to Richie’s house, barrelling in the door with a quick hello to Mrs. Tozier before running up the stairs to Richie’s bedroom. Eddie sat on Richie’s bed patiently, swinging his feet as Richie lugged out the record player. Richie silently set up the Buddy Holly record, turning to Eddie with a smug grin as the machine began to play a scratchy rendition of a song similar to what they’d heard on the radio. Eddie began to giggle as Richie ducked under his bed to retrieve the magazines. “Here he is,” Richie announced almost dramatically, scooting next to Eddie on the bed and opening up the magazine.

Buddy Holly was _pretty_ . It was an odd thought for Eddie to have; boys aren’t supposed to be pretty, are they? But there was no doubt about it. The idea cemented itself into Eddie’s mind and stubbornly refused to leave. Buddy Holly was pretty; something about the curve of his jaw, his soft looking lips...and his glasses. _He certainly does have glasses_. Eddie felt a heat begin to rise to his cheeks, and he turned to Richie, who intently flipped through the magazines without speaking. This was uncharacteristic for Richie, who could usually run his mouth for hours. But they sat there, not speaking, Buddy Holly’s voice crooning softly over the record player.

Eddie was struck by an odd sense of intimacy in that moment. He felt extraordinarily close to Richie; _too_ close, almost. The heat in Eddie’s cheeks began to flood the rest of his body, and he shimmied off of Richie’s bed and onto the floor, shifting the magazines and causing Richie to look to him confusedly. “What’s the matter, Eddie?”

“I think I gotta go,” Eddie quickly came up with a lie, “Uh, my mom and all. You know how it is. If I’m late for supper she’ll have a bird.” The truth was, Eddie had felt an overpowering sense of _wrongness_ ; he felt wrong for being that close to Richie, he felt wrong for thinking how pretty Buddy Holly was, and most of all he felt wrong for starting to realize that Richie was pretty too. _They really do look alike._ He did not know why he felt this was wrong, but the feeling washed over him in a powerful wave, and combined with the heat still burning him up made him nauseous and dizzy.

Richie gave an understanding grimace, scooting off of the bed after Eddie and leaning forward to turn the record player off. “Ah, yeah, that sucks. You’ve got a player at home, though, right? D’you wanna borrow the record?” Eddie frowned partially, taking a moment to think it over in his head. A part of him still felt that wrongness, that he should just leave Richie’s house and not think about Buddy Holly for the rest of the day. But at the same time…

“That’d be great, Rich. Thanks!”

“No problem,” Richie replied, taking the record off of the player and putting it back in its case. The removal of the noise somehow made that frightening intimacy Eddie had felt even stronger, and a shiver ran down his spine. “Well, I’ll be on my way then.” But he did not leave immediately. He felt an odd tension in the room, like in the movies when you know the guy and the girl are going to kiss. _No no no it’s not like that its not like that don’t think that!_ He looked at Richie almost pleadingly, realizing as he did so that none of what he was feeling was in Richie’s eyes.

Richie simply looked at Eddie with a neutral expression, which slowly grew more concerned as Eddie stared helplessly. “Hello? Earth to Kaspbrak?” Richie joked, waving one hand in front of Eddie’s face. The teasing but good-hearted nature of the act was completely normal, comforting, but now only made Eddie’s heart race. _He’s just being regular old Richie. It’s only me who’s feeling weird_ . Anxiety washed over him, along with the all-too-familiar feeling of his throat beginning to close up ever so slightly.

“I’m good, I’m good,” Eddie wheezed, quickly pulling out his aspirator. “I’m...I’m gonna head back, See ya, Trashmouth.” After a quick blast of his aspirator he picked up the record and began to walk out of the door. He gave a last look at the room, at Richie, at the magazines laid out on the bed, and he hesitated. _I really don’t want to go._ But the rapid beating of his heart and the fog in his brain told him he had to leave. His eyes lingered on the magazines and he made one last request. “Um, actually, can I borrow one of your magazines too?”

___

That evening, in Eddie’s mind, became a blur of uncomfortable heat and unwanted realizations. He rode his bike alone back to his house, struggling to balance both the record and the magazine while he did so. His mother was sitting on the porch, a crazed look of worry in her eyes, ready to chew him out for whatever it was he had done this time. She had tears in her eyes; apparently he had told her he would be home by four, and it was four thirty. Truthfully, he had not been keeping track of time at all.

“You really are careless sometimes, Eddie!” she sobbed, holding him close to her in an action that was both caring and angry. “Frightening your poor mother like that...where on Earth were you!?”

“Richie’s place,” Eddie murmured in response, all too used to this display. He was mostly concerned with hiding the record from her. Much to Eddie’s relief, his mother’s grip loosened at the mention of Richie,  and he wriggled away from her as she made a small sound of disgust.

“Of course! I should have known. That Tozier kid’s nothing but trouble. He’s a bad influence on you...Where are you going? I’m talking to you, Eddie!” She switched subjects as Eddie began to walk away from her, up the stairs to his room.

“Um, I have a headache. I’m going to my room,” Eddie lied, and his mother’s face softened from anger to a look of pure maternal concern.

“Oh, baby, you should have told me! I’m sure it’s from all that rock n roll Richie plays...yes, you go up and get some rest.” She pulled him close and pinched his cheeks, kissing his forehead and making him grimace ever so slightly.

“Thanks, ma,” he muttered, running quickly up the stairs as his mother called out after him.

“Supper’s in an hour!”

Eddie locked the door to his bedroom as soon as he entered, placing the record and the magazine on his bed and letting out a sigh of relief. _Finally, some privacy_ . The thought took him by surprise; he wasn’t doing anything that needed privacy, was he? Just listening to a record and looking at a magazine. And yet a little voice in his head told him he needed to hide it away behind a locked door and not get caught. He lugged the record player out from under his bed and opened it up, adjusting the volume so his mother would not hear. Once it was playing, he opened up the magazine to the Buddy Holly article. He was still there, and still beautiful; Eddie noted, with an odd sort of fear, the shift in his mind from ‘pretty’ to ‘beautiful’. But it was overwhelmingly true. Eddie listened to the sound of Buddy Holly’s voice, looked at the pictures of him, and a blush ran across his cheeks, his heart took on a faster rhythm. He was _smitten_ , the textbook definition of a celebrity crush. _I wonder if he has a girlfriend…?_

But Buddy Holly was a boy. This was the biggest roadblock in Eddie’s mind; _He’s a boy, and you are too, and boys can’t be pretty or beautiful and even if they can you’re not the kind of boy who thinks other boys are pretty and beautiful_ . But another part of his mind knew that these words, however comforting they might be on the surface, were simply untrue. He could not deny the blood rushing to his face, or the beating of his heart, or the sweat beginning to form on his brow from the heat boiling deep inside his stomach. _I wonder if he has a girlfriend. I wonder what it’s like to be his girlfriend…_ And then the mental image came; Buddy Holly leaning in and kissing him on the lips. It struck him like lightning, half of his brain shouting _no no no! Don’t think about that!_ The thought felt dirty, it felt bad, but at the same time it filled him with the oddest sort of intrigue.

At this point his mind began to wander, away from Buddy Holly and -- more concerningly -- towards other boys. Boys he _knew_ ; his good friends. He thought of Stan, neat and lanky in his Boy Scout uniform, of Bill and his quiet confidence. He thought of Mike’s steady, composed voice, of Ben and his sweet smile. And Richie; _Well, of course Richie_ .  Richie and the shit-eating grin he seemed to wear everywhere, Richie and his mismatched shirts and hand-me-down varsity jacket, Richie and the voices he did, which made Eddie laugh no matter how bad they were...Richie and his glasses. And then another fantasy; he and Richie sitting together in the Barrens, like they’d done today. Richie turning off his radio and scooting closer to Eddie. Richie putting a hand on his shoulder, pulling him close...And then all of a sudden, like the pieces of a factory machine, everything came together into a single epiphany. One deceptively simple idea, explaining all of this, explaining all the guilt and the bad feelings, explaining the intrigue and the desire and the horrible heat. It hit Eddie like a bolt of lightning. “Oh, _shit!_ ” He exclaimed out loud, unable to keep in his shock before clapping a hand over his mouth, hoping his mother did not hear. The next part he whispered to himself; “I like boys instead!”

This was a shock, but, after furiously going over the facts of it all in his head, Eddie deducted that perhaps it was not much of a surprise. He had never really had a crush on a girl, or even really known a girl well enough to have a crush other than Bev. But he liked Bev like he liked all his other friends...who were boys. It wasn’t that he _dis_ liked girls; he just never really gave them a second thought (again, except for Bev). _And_ , he began to realize, the gears turning in his head, there was the newfound matter of his dislike (or perhaps ‘fear’ was a more accurate word) for having to shower with the other boys after PE. Whoever on the Derry school board who hated kids the most decided that, in the fifth grade and beyond, students were required to shower after their PE classes. Eddie had loathed this ever since day one. Something about the whole process made him feel embarrassed, self conscious, and now, as he was realizing, _guilty_ . The same sort of guilt he felt in Richie’s room, like he was feeling a way that no one else was. He was as equally concerned with not looking at anyone else as he was with making sure nobody looked at him. And now it made sense! It made sense in an unpleasant, yet welcoming sort of way. _Yes. Yes, this is what’s going on_. It was both a relief and a burden; knowing himself more, and yet knowing that his self was not the norm.

The very first thing he thought to do was tell someone. The truth of it sat burning on his mind, begging to be let out -- it was almost painful. But tell who? His mother? He shuddered, as if overcome with a physical negativity. _Definitely_ not his mother. He knew the way she complained about the admittedly small gay population of Derry; ‘those queers’, she called them, with a tone of voice that always made Eddie frown even before this day. And then there was the trouble with The Rooster; a bar that opened up in ‘54 and closed shortly after. A very specific type of bar with a very specific clientele. It had been fairly harmless, if a little loud on some Saturdays, but its fatal flaw came with it’s being on the same street as Derry Elementary. This caused a small, but determined, collection of PTA moms to fly into a rage of protest, with Sonia Kaspbrak being one of the forerunners. “It’s not that I disapprove of that kind of lifestyle or anything,” Eddie remembered her saying to Stan’s mother over the phone in an awfully disapproving tone. “It’s just that it’s so close to the children...do we really want that sort of influence? I know _I_ don’t want Eddie around that sort of thing.” _Well, ma, I ended up doing that sort of thing anyway._ It was a funny thought, but a sad one all the same; he laughed a stale sort of laugh.

If not his mother, then who? One of the other Losers? It seemed a much more viable option, but still something held him back. Unlike with his mother, he could not be certain how any of them would respond. Part of him felt confident that they would be okay with it, that they would be okay with _him_ ... _but what if they aren’t?_ What if they stopped being friends? The thought caused a deep wave of panic to crash over Eddie, his faulty lungs giving a single worried squeeze. They couldn’t stop being friends, because that would mean there wouldn't be seven of them, and that would mean...Something Bad. Something Bad with a capital S and B, something so frightening the mere suggestion of it filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread, though he did not know what it was. _What it is...What It Is…!_ In a month’s time he would know what it was, What It Was, and 28 years later he would know even better. But now he knew only that the Loser’s Club breaking up was not an option.

Eventually he settled on calling Richie. He could not _exactly_ trace the process through which he thought of this...but he felt that a part of him wanted Richie to say that he liked boys, too. In his head he could hear Richie’s voice. _Shit, Eds, me too. Do you maybe wanna…?_ Eddie bit his lip, shuddering slightly as he tried to will away the thought. It felt at best overly hopeful, and at worst intrusive; as if he were taking advantage of Richie. _You better not call him, Eddie, because he’s not gonna tell you what you want to hear. You know it. Don’t pretend you don’t_. A small voice piped up in the back of his mind, but he was walking downstairs to the living room and dialing the number before he had the chance to listen to it. His mother would be in the kitchen, preparing dinner...if he spoke quietly enough, perhaps she wouldn’t hear him. As the phone rang, he kept an eye on her silhouette, and the sound of Richie’s voice on the other line almost startled him. “Hello?”

“Hey, Rich, it’s Eddie,” Eddie began. As he had walked down the stairs, he’d planned out what he was going to say in his head, nearly word for word, as a way to convince himself he would royally screw this up. _I’m still not sure why I wanted to tell you this but…_ But that sentence, nor any of the many endings he had planned for it, came out of his mouth. The words tried to escape, but became caught in his throat like a fish in a trap, floundering and making him choke up. No matter how hard he tried, tried to say _anything_ on the topic so overwhelmingly at hand, he just couldn’t. He was trapped by that same embarrassment, that awful guilt, only now it had sunk deep through his veins and poisoned his heart. _Is this what Bill feels like? I can’t...I can’t say anything! Oh God!_

“Hey, Eddie, you still on the line?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Eddie squeaked out at Richie’s comment, desperately begging his stupid mind to come up with something, _anything!_ What he eventually managed to choke out was “I finished listening to that album.”

This seemed to elicit a positive response from Richie. “Awesome! How’d you like it?”

“It was really good! I liked it!”

“Great!”

Eddie could almost feel Richie’s smile over the phone, and it made a small blush rise to his cheeks. _I have to tell him. God, I have to tell him or I think I’ll die_ . But how? Not directly; he’d already tried that. And if that was out, then…? “I _really_ like Buddy Holly,” Eddie eventually settled on, hoping the tone of his voice conveyed something. There was  pause for a moment before he spoke again. “Is that...normal?”

Richie did not respond for a moment, and Eddie shivered as his mind raced, thinking he’d gotten through. _That was easier than I thought!_ He felt nauseous, but in the odd sort of way that you feel at an amusement park; uneasy but excited. Fists clenched, he heard the faint sound of Richie opening his mouth to speak. “ _Everybody_ likes Buddy Holly, Eds! That’s why he makes so much fuckin’ _money_ !”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie scolded him lightly, unable to keep a laugh out of his voice. _Same old Richie_. And yet, at the same time, an odd feeling of sadness began to grow in him. He could not tell why; all he knew was that Richie did not hate him, and that Richie did not know a thing.

They talked until Eddie’s mother called him for dinner; about the album, about rock and roll, but never about what Eddie had meant by the call all along. Still that sadness rested in his stomach, and as he lay in bed that night, he began to cry, though he did not know why.

___

As the summer of 1958 went on, Eddie realized, with what would become a sense of grave resignation, that these types of almost-quite-coming-outs were a specialty of his. The next was with Bev; the two of them down in the Barrens like always, sprawled over a _Plastic Man_ comic Bev had brought from her house. They read in silence -  but even days after his phone call with Richie, Eddie still found himself paralyzed by an unfamiliar fear. It crept up on him from all sides and made the occasional shock go up his spine, keeping him on edge with his breathing shallow. It was Bev who pointed it out, her clear, concerned voice cutting through the haze of silence. “Everything alright, Eddie? D’you need me to get your aspirator?”

Eddie flinched at the sudden sound, which only made Bev frown further. “No, no, I’m alright,” Eddie reassured her, though he knew now that he had to talk. Bev was a smart girl; she knew something was up. “Um, Bev?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you know when you like a boy?” Eddie did not make eye contact with her as he spoke, still looking at the comic,  but he watched her in his peripheral as her face scrunched up in thought.

“Well, how do _you_ know when you like a girl?”

This was not the answer Eddie was expecting. Now he looked up at her, taking a moment for thought himself. “I don’t really like any girls.”

“You like me!”

“Yeah, but that’s different! I mean _like_ like, like...you know!” Eddie felt a blotchy blush starting on his face, and Bev giggled, putting a hand over her mouth. Eddie laughed too, picking up on the contagion of it. “Well, I guess there’s...someone that I like. A...girl.”

Eddie hadn’t intended to say that. He hadn’t even realized it until Bev put her hand back at her side, eyes suddenly keen. Something about being with Bev, seeing her laughing and happy, put him into a relaxed state that made his mouth lax, saying his thoughts freely without second-guessing. He figured this out with a sort of fear as Bev leaned in towards him, her braids swinging forward and a big grin on her face. “Really!?” She half-gasped, delighted by the scandal of it. “Who?”

“She, um…” Eddie faltered, quickly trying to come up with the lie he would now have to be stuck in. “She doesn’t go to school with us. Her name’s…” He trailed again, begging his brain to come up with anything other than the name of who he knew he was clearly talking about. _Richie Richie Richie I’m talking about Richie Bev it’s RICHIE!_ “...Rachel.” he finished his sentence lamely, waiting for Bev to call his bluff.

But Bev looked like she was hanging on his every word, her eyes misty with awe. “What’s she like?” Eddie smiled a bit, blushing in the slightest at Bev’s words. “She’s...really funny. She loves to tell jokes and she talks really loudly.”

“She sounds like Richie!” Bev exclaimed in response, and Eddie’s heart skipped a frightened beat.

“Yeah, I guess so,” He replied quickly, a small wheeze in his voice. A part of him wanted her to know what he was really talking about, to call him out on it so he would be forced to tell the truth. He knew deep in his heart that that would be the only way the truth would come out; if someone forced it out of him. Otherwise it was just too hard to swallow and harder still to cough back up. He watched Bev’s eyes like a deer caught in headlights, waiting for the glint of suspicion to fill them. But it did not come. She did not follow up on her previous comment, instead letting out what was almost a sigh. “Where did you two meet?”

“At the Aladdin.

” Bev was looking up now; there was something inside her. The desire to be loved, perhaps, or to love someone, to experience what she thought Eddie was feeling. She was living vicariously through the lie he was telling. It made him feel a little sad.

“How do you feel when you think about her?” Bev asked, almost too quiet to hear. They were sitting upright next to each other now; Bev’s long fingers with their painted nails rested gently over Eddie’s jittery hands. The sun was starting to set; the Standpipe was silhouetted against it in the distance. Eddie had seen enough movies to know that _this_ is what a romantic moment was supposed to be, not sitting on your friend’s bed and reading magazines. This moment was supposed to be romantic, because Bev was a girl; but Eddie didn’t feel that way at all. Nothing about hanging out with Bev felt romantic. And he could tell Bev felt that way too.

“I feel...really embarrassed. I feel like I shouldn’t feel the way I do about hi-her.” Eddie wheezed once more, but Bev didn't notice. Her eyes were closed, and she hummed softly as Eddie kept talking. “But I want to be around her all the time. I love hearing her voice, and I always laugh when she tells jokes even when they're not funny.” He was beginning to cry a little; he hoped it didn't come through in his voice. “I just...I just like him a whole lot and I don't know what to do.”

Bev stopped humming. Eddie didn't realize he had slipped up until she spoke, a mature tone in her voice. “You said him.” Eddie didn't have a response for her. She opened her eyes, looking as if she had emerged from a deep sleep, and the two of them walked back into Derry, arm in arm. They didn't speak until they got to Bev's house. “You know that question you asked me? I think… I think you know the answer.” She kissed him on the cheek before walking up to her front door and ringing the doorbell. Eddie knew the drill from here; he booked it before Mr. Marsh came to the door so Bev wouldn't get in trouble. Once he was out of sight, he slowed to a walk, wondering for a panicked moment if Bev would tell. He felt as though the answer was no. As he walked home, something like a flower blossomed inside of his heart, glowing from within.

___

Bev knew - or, at least, she knew something. She never brought it up again, and often times Eddie would think she had forgotten; but then she would make eye contact with him, the electricity of a secret between them, and smile. She became a sort of protector in his eyes - it filled him with a confidence he wasn’t expecting. He found himself, at times, a little bolder, a little more centered; a little more willing to face the thing that lived deep inside of him, like the stony pit of a fruit.

He was at his boldest the day he talked to Mike. The two of them sat in the back of Mr. Hanlon’s pick up truck, sharing a bottle of Orange Crush Eddie had bought and not speaking much. They were waiting for Mr. Hanlon to drive Eddie back into Derry after a day of hanging out with Mike at the Hanlon farm. It had been a lot of Eddie standing out of the way and talking to Mike as he did chores around the farm; Eddie tried to help where he could, but it was clear that he was not cut out for most any physical labor. Now the day was over -- the sun was setting, an emerging theme in this chapter of Eddie’s life. “Hey, Mike?” Eddie said quickly, his heart protesting a little in his chest as the other boy looked over at him silently. “Do you...do you ever think about other boys?”

This question seemed to throw Mike for a loop. He frowned, looking genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Eddie trailed off, trying to think of how to give a real answer. “I mean, do you ever _think_ about boys?”

“Almost all of you guys are boys. Of course I think about boys.” Mike had a look on his face as though Eddie were telling a joke he didn’t understand. Eddie’s face strained as he tried to think of a way to explain what he meant without blowing his cover.

“I mean...think about boys...the way girls think about boys.” He said the last part in nearly a whisper, lowering his tone of voice almost conspiratorially. _This_ Mike understood; a strange, almost solemn expression clouded his face. The ever so slight hint of a blush sneaked under his cheeks, but he kept eye contact with Eddie as he spoke.

“Maybe.”

It felt like a non-answer, and Eddie’s heart sank just in the slightest. _Maybe?_ He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting as an answer; but still he felt let down in the strangest way. He wanted a solid answer, something to hold onto, but the idea of trying to push it out of Mike made him feel gross and predatory. Eddie felt that, somewhere down inside, he could use Mike’s answer as a test for himself; _If he ways yes, I’ll tell him. If he says no, I’ll never tell anyone_. He tried to think of something to say, but Mike spoke again. “Do you?”

“No,” Eddie replied, the lie coming out before he could even really think about it. It shocked him, almost; he felt a shame so deep his knee jerk response was to deny it, to keep it away from him. It felt like an emotion too heavy for an eleven year old to carry. “I’m just...curious.”

Eddie had revealed nothing. If anything, he had hidden himself even more; but that air of _revealing_ , that heavy feeling he had felt when he told Bev - told her for real - existed now, strangled in the closeness between them. Mike was a smart kid -- the kind of person could pick up on what people around him were feeling. Eddie had always admired that. But at the same time, Mike was himself an enigma; he had a thoughtful face, never seeming to reveal anything, but one where you knew that there was an ocean of thoughts and emotion just beyond the surface. When Mike cried, it meant something really serious was up. Could Mike know, picking up on some wavelength Eddie was putting out? It was impossible to tell; Eddie felt small and vulnerable in his not-knowing.

Mr. Hanlon came out to the truck and started driving Eddie home. He and Mike did not speak to each other until Eddie was hopping out of the bed of the truck, Mike calling out to him just before he knocked on the door. “You should ask Bill. About it.” In just a couple of weeks, those words would have a different meaning, something sinister...but in the present, Eddie knew exactly what Mike meant. He nodded, watching as the truck drove back away from his house, and went inside to call Bill.

___

It was Bill who knew, _really_ knew. Eddie had not asked when he called; his mother was in the room, knitting idly as she watched television, and he could feel his heart rising in his throat as he dialed the number. He didn’t dare ask within earshot of her. At this point, he no longer feared that his friends would leave him behind -- he had had enough success to banish that. His fear now was of a third party; that someone else would intervene, tell him he could never talk to the others again...someone like his mother. He didn’t like this newfound distrust of his mother; it made him feel like a bad son.

He spent the afternoon at Bill’s house, playing board games and talking about movies they had seen. After Georgie died, Bill’s house was a bit of an uncomfortable place; Mr. and Mrs. Denbrough didn’t speak much, and Bill looked away when the two of them went up the stairs and passed Georgie’s bedroom. There was a palpable guilt throughout the entire Denbrough residence, and at eleven it was not something Eddie knew how to take in and understand. Eddie did not say anything about the topic he had at hand until he was in Bill’s room, playing Journey Through Europe and sitting on Bill’s bed; but it festered in him, a constant antsy feeling right underneath his skin. It was little things that set it off in full swing, like when Bill closed the door to his room. Something about it made Eddie shiver, a guilty blush lighting just barely in his cheeks. _It’s like how my mom makes me keep the door open when Bev’s over. Except..._ The subtext of it chilled him to the bone, though he knew that Bill didn’t think anything of it. Or so he had thought, at least.

“Y-Y-Yeah,” Bill had replied to Eddie’s fateful question; he had phrased it in the same way he had to Mike, but this time there was no need for clarification. The understanding frightened Eddie. “Guh-guh-guh-girls too!” Bill added quickly, a brief spark of energy flowing through him as though he had to prove something. It left just as quickly as he returned back to his usual posture. “But buh-boys as well.” Bill's words hung there for a moment, suspended in the air. Eddie could not fully comprehend what he was hearing; it seemed, in a way, too good to be true. “My dad sh-howed me this old m-m-movie,” Bill spoke again, the silence seeming to have put him on edge. He looked up for a second, sticking his tongue out slightly as he tried to recall the title of the film. “D-D-D-D-Dr. Juh-Juh-Juh-Jekyll a-a-and….D-Dr. J-Jekyll...”

“And Mr. Hyde?” Eddie offered, and Bill nodded, a bit of an embarrassed blush coming to his cheeks. Eddie hated watching him struggle; he felt bad that Bill had such a hard time getting his words out.

“So I was w-w-w-watchin’ the m-m-movie, and th-the whole t-t-time I couldn’t st-top looking at the guh-guy playing Dr. Juh-Juh-Jekyll. He was just so…” Again Bill struggled for the word; not because of his stutter, but because he needed time to re-access the memory - and the feeling that went with it. An odd, whistling sigh came from the back of his throat as he spoke again. “Pruh-pruh-pruh- _pretty_.”

A chord stuck in Eddie as he listened to Bill speak, something crucial and deep ringing out within him. _Pretty_ . He was hearing his own thoughts, his own feelings, mirrored back in Bill. _In Bill!_ Bill, who was so driven and brave, Bill who was a leader and who all their other friends looked up to...Bill who Eddie, himself, looked up to more than anybody else in his life. And yet there was something else that was unfamiliar - _girls too._ There was no girls too for Eddie; he could sense that somewhere in the back of his brain, too deep in to explain but just enough to know. This difference made a bad voice start running through him, buzzing like a generator, though he could not tell whose it was. _You’re not like Bill after all. This security you’re feeling now, these good feelings are all gonna go away as soon as he finds out the whole truth. Because when he does he’s gonna say-_

“Do you w-w-want me to kuh-kiss you?” The sudden sound of Bill speaking again jolted Eddie out of his mental fog with a harsh burst of feeling.

“What?” he asked, his heart starting to hammer away in his ribcage, not because he did not hear but because he did not understand. Bill’s face tensed, and he immediately launched into a guilty explanation.

“I-I-I m-m-mean, you a-asked b-b-because you...fuh-feel that way, right?” Bill was quiet for another moment, and it took Eddie a bit to realize this was his cue to nod abashedly. He did not trust his tongue to speak. “When Stuh-Stuh-Stan told me th-that he l-l-liked boys, I kuh-kissed him. A-And when a guh-guy and a girl h-hang out, th-they’re supposed to kuh-kuh-kuh-kiss, r-right? So wh-with us...i-it’s…” Bill held his hand out in front of him, as if to make some sort of clarifying gesture, but nothing came. The two of them stared at Bill’s hands, the palms facing upwards in an undefinable emotion. There was an energy between them, this force, this emotion that felt both terrible and seducing, felt both distant from them and at home in their small and awkward bodies. They stared at Bill’s hands and frowned for what they did not yet know. Then, gently pushing the Journey to Europe board aside so as not to knock over anyone’s pieces, Bill closed his eyes, leaned forward and kissed Eddie.

_(First kiss first kiss this is it this is my first kiss!!!!!)_

As soon as their lips met, Eddie felt himself seized by a sense of wrongness. _No no Bill is a boy and I am a boy and boys don’t kiss boys!_ But he did not flinch away from the kiss, even though every cell in his body screamed for him to. He even closed his eyes, nervously fluttering his eyelids shut with a sort of resignation. He did not mind the kiss; liked it, even, though he would not admit this to himself until it was over. With his eyes closed, he saw Richie in front of him, the two of them locked together by the lips out on the Canal, a breeze blowing past them in silence. His heart fluttered, and a profound sadness filled him like a well. It hung there for a second, materializing in thought moments later. _How will I ever get married?_ It was a useless thought, irrelevant, but it clenched around his heart like a vice.

The panic set in when they separated, both gasping for breath. It came upon Eddie with a white hot intensity, and his lungs twisted and seized up with it. _Girls too. Bill likes girls too. And when I nodded he thought I was saying girls too. And I kissed a boy and boys aren’t supposed to kiss boys and when I go home my mom is going to know she’ll be able to tell and Bill’s first kiss was probably with a girl but mine was with him it was with a boy and I thought about a boy while I did it and I liked it I liked it I LIKED IT!!!_ “I gotta go, Big Bill,” Eddie wheezed painfully, scrambling off the bed as though it had burned him and quickly reaching into his pocket for his aspirator. Bill, likely seeing the anxiety in Eddie’s face, frowned vaguely.

“Are you-”

“I’m really sorry I have to go!” The noise cut off there, Eddie staring at Bill with an entirely red face. Something passed between them; that heaviness on Eddie’s soul had a mirror held up to it in that moment, reflecting back at Bill in all its shame and embarrassment. Eddie did not want to leave; he wanted to kiss Bill again, if only so he could pretend he was kissing Richie again. Bill went to speak, but Eddie walked out of the door and down the stairs, his heart beating like he had just run a race.

He could not make eye contact with his mother when he returned home. She did not know, of course; it was ridiculous to think so. But Eddie still caught himself holding his breath and needed to remind himself to exhale. As he lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, he thought about what he had done; he regretted leaving, really. When he finally dozed off, it was into a sleep plagued by dreams of kissing boys - Richie, boys he knew, boys he did not know, and some boys who seemed to have no faces at all. When he awoke, he wept in the light of the rising sun through his window, because he knew that plagued was not the right word.

___

It was a setback. Eddie knew that. For two weeks, it was difficult to look Bill in the eye; painful, even. His regret hung on him and ate away, an overcoat far too heavy and imposing for his small body. But, at eleven years old, he could do what one can only really do at that age: he forgot. It sounds bad to say that; he did not forget the kiss, of course, and he did not forget how he felt about boys. But the negative feelings, the shame, the guilt, blended into the background static of the hazy summer days. Bill did not say anything about it to him, nor did he say anything to Bill; so in a way, it was as though it had never happened. For better or for worse, that static settled into him, diluting until it no longer felt too painful. It overcame him, at times; he would weep in bed or in the shower where his mother could not see or hear him. But this would flush it out again, and he would return to the smiling and fumbling child that he was, perhaps, meant to be all along.

It was a Saturday in mid-June, exactly a week before he encountered It in person for the first time, that Eddie was at his happiest. Perhaps there was a cosmic reason for that; one last hoorah before everything went to hell in a handbasket. That Saturday was Stan’s birthday; to celebrate, his father drove him, Bill, Richie, and Eddie half an hour to the coast to go to the boardwalk. It was the first time Eddie had ever been to a boardwalk, and though he did not know it then it was the last as well. The day was a blur of excitement and gaudy carnival colors; most of the specifics got lost over time, but he did not, or could not, forget how happy he was. _Happy_. It was a simple emotion, clean and refreshing. Stan got a bird painted on his face, Richie ate three lollipops and got a stomach ache, Bill won a rubber duck at ring toss, and Eddie was happy. Yes, he was very happy, and he smiled freely with the absence of weight on his shoulders.

It was the end of the day that stood out most to Eddie, once they were exhausted and sunburnt and ready for one last ride before heading back to Derry. This last ride was the Rock-n-Roller; it played loud rock music, was covered in bright lights and pictures of musicians, and looked like it would make you puke, which was probably why it was Richie’s favorite. Ever since he had laid eyes on it Richie had begged the others to go on it with him, and only now did they indulge him. Shuffling into line, a quick  rock-paper-scissors determined who would pair up with the two person carts of the ride. Bill and Richie would go in one cart; Stan and Eddie would be in another. This disappointed Eddie on a shallow level - he had wanted to ride with Richie, though he did not know why (aside from the obvious). Perhaps, on some level, he was picking up on the romantic vibe of the whole thing.

Yes, there was something oddly romantic about the Rock-n-Roller; maybe it was the two-rider carts, the partial tunnel on the circular track, or the fact that it was one of those rides where you end up pressed against the person you’re riding with from the force. Eddie could not say for certain. But he thought about these things as he looked at Stan, Stan with his closed eyes and reserved smile. Eddie liked how Stan closed his eyes on all the rides; he was too afraid to do it himself. And it was only then, looking over at Stan and feeling the two of them squished together from the ride that he remembered something Bill had said. _'_ __W_ hen Stan told me that he liked boys, I kissed him.' Stan likes boys too! _ The realization ripped through him like a bullet. He immediately looked away from Stan, shame rearing its gruesome head within him for a moment, only to look back almost immediately with his heart hammering away inside of him. Eddie did not know how to process what he had learned -- or, rather, what he has just learned he had learned.

The ride grinded to a stop, Eddie unsticking himself from Stan’s side and looking the other boy straight in the eye. The ride was not ending; “Are you folks ready to go backwards?” The operator crooned into the mic, and everyone shouted. Eddie could pick out Richie’s voice among the crowd with no trouble at all.

“Hey, Stan?” Eddie said, almost too quiet to hear. Stan turned his head to Eddie without saying anything, and that was when Eddie kissed him.

Eddie didn’t know exactly what he meant by doing that. Perhaps he was trying to prove something to himself; that if he liked both being kissed by boys _and_ kissing them himself, then he would really know for certain. Perhaps this was his way of telling Stan, without having to think about any words to use. Or perhaps to make the strangest sort of connection -- they had both kissed Bill, and now they had kissed each other. The circle was closed. An out of place adult voice in Eddie’s head told him that they were the only boys he would ever get to kiss; it turned out to be correct, though Eddie did not know this at eleven.

The kiss lasted maybe a second at most, and made Eddie’s mouth taste like face paint, but he felt his heart swelling in his chest with it. It felt _right_ on some deeper than physical level; the way that kissing between boys and girls looked like it felt in the movies. _So, this is the way it goes._ When they parted, Eddie remembered a time when a butterfly had landed on the tip of Stan’s nose - the expression on his face now was not unlike how he had looked then. His eyes were wide, and he looked down at his nose with an expression where Eddie could not tell if Stan was about to laugh or cry. He darted his eyes up at Eddie, lips parted on the verge of words, but then the ride began again and they crashed back into the blur of flashing lights and music.

Stan never did say anything about it to Eddie, not then and not ever in their lifetimes. There was a red blush that spread across his entire face and down his neck, even under the face paint; Richie joked about how he must have gotten sunburned worse than the rest of them. On the drive back into Derry, Eddie sat on the middle seat between Bill and Richie, while Stan sat shotgun (he didn’t like to be touched very much). Every so often Stan would look back at him and smile almost shyly, remnants of the blush still gracing his face. Richie cracked jokes with his frantic energy, and Bill laughed with his steady and reserved laugh. None of them hated Eddie. They were his friends and they liked him very much. In an unprecedented spike of boldness, Eddie hovered his fingers over Richie’s and let them lay there lightly, like the touch of a ghost. Richie looked at him, a little confused, but did not frown or jerk his hand away. They stayed like that the last ten minutes of the ride.

Eddie almost told them all, right there, in the car. If Stan’s dad hadn’t been there, he very likely would have. He had never felt more comfortable or loved in his life than he did then, though he could not put a finger on why. As he got into bed that night (after reassuring his mother that he was perfectly safe and had no broken bones and had not eaten or drank anything strange) he did so with a smile on his face for what felt like the first time in a long time. But then he had the dream.

___

It started fairly normally, as Eddie supposed all nightmares do. In his dream it was the middle of the night, and he was standing in the middle of the road in front of Fashion Fix, a woman’s boutique his mother often shopped at. But what he was seeing was not Fashion Fix; he was looking into the past, at what the building had once been, and that building was The Rooster. It was not a building Eddie had ever seen in his life, so the edges blurred and mixed together the way a dream does. Neon lights shone out from it in shades of toxic green and red, almost too bright to look at directly, and the bass of a song pounded through the sidewalk and into his chest. Through the window, Eddie could see shadowy figures swaying, laughing and dancing with one another. _They look like they’re having fun._ Without noticing, Eddie began to slowly walk forward, at the odd pace one keeps in a dream, as the door swung open via unseen hands.

The Rooster, though full of people, felt cold and empty on the inside, and Eddie frowned vaguely. The shadowy figures he had seen from the outside turned out to be exactly that; shadows of young men, faceless and whispering in a language Eddie could not understand. They stood only at the edges of the building, leaving a gaping hole in the center where the tiles of a dance floor lay unoccupied. The music sounded tinny and canned. _Is this it?_ He thought to himself, feeling a little stupid and more than a little self conscious. He took a slight step back, perhaps moving to re-exit the building, before something caught his eye. There was a figure shorter than the others, standing by the back door of the building, and Eddie squinted to try and make out the details before his heart began to race. _That’s Richie!_

If the other figures were in shadow, Richie seemed to be almost bathed in light as soon as Eddie realized his presence. He was almost angelic, a serene smile on his face that seemed detached from his more rambunctious personality. Eddie heart jolted forward in his chest; this was not the first dream he had had in which Richie made an appearance, but something felt...different. His presence felt _real_ here, like Eddie could reach out and touch him (and oh did he want to). The light from the ceiling refracted off of Richie’s glasses made his eyes gleam almost excitedly, and Eddie felt a sappy grin growing on his face. _I really am in love with him. Goddammit_. He thought his legs were going to give out. Richie grinned and blew him a kiss, then quick as a flash turned around and ran out the back door of the Rooster.

Eddie was following him before he knew, his legs running at that awkward dream pace. His heart pounding in his chest, he lugged the heavy door open with some difficulty. This part of the dream felt real, almost too real; the metal of the handle was cold on his hands. There was a rush of air as the door finally opened, and this was where the dream finally began feeling like one -- he was standing in a graveyard.

The door of the Rooster opened onto a graveyard, in midday, a whole other world than the one he had entered from. There was astro-turf under his bare feet, and identical white stone graves stretched out for what felt like forever on all sides of him. This frightened Eddie; he’d never liked graveyards very much, and something about this one felt particularly ominous. He turned on his heels to go back through the door, but it had disappeared. A slight panic rising in his stomach, Eddie decided the best thing to do would be to look for Richie. He nervously began to walk forward, intentionally keeping his gaze away from the headstones and whatever was engraved on them. He grew antsy as time went on; he could not find Richie, nor anyone else, for that matter. He hated being alone in this place his mind had created. As he was getting to the end of his rope, he saw a figure in the distance, and he walked towards it with a sigh of relief. But a few steps forward revealed that it was not Richie.

It was a clown.

He did not recognize the clown at first, not now. By the end of the summer, it would haunt him to his very core, appearing in nightmares even worse than this one would become; nightmares that carried into the waking world. In his adult life, he would fall into the bliss of forgetfulness, but wake quite often with tears drying on his cheeks and a damp pillow...as though he had wept in the night. But in this moment, the clown was just a clown. It waved to him jovially, holding a handful of balloons in its other hand. “Hiya, Eddie,” The clown said in a cheery tone. It had the rough but friendly voice of an adult...but something more sinister lay below the surface. “Why the long face?”

Eddie blinked, and the clown was in front of him, a sudden motion that threw him off slightly. He took a nervous step backwards. “I’m looking for my friend,” Eddie explained, unsure of why he was saying this to the clown and yet unable to stop himself. “His name is Richie.”

 The clown tilted its head to one side like a dog. “Oh yes, Richie is your very good friend, isn’t he?” Eddie nodded happily. “You like him a _whooooole_ lot, don’t you, Eds?” Something sinister creeped into the clown’s grin, and a wave of something cold washed over Eddie, ripping the smile from his face. He shivered, not responding, a cloud of worry forming over his mind. The clown kept grinning, like a wolf that has caught a lamb. “I know exactly what you are, Eddie.” Its tone shifted to something slightly malicious, that sent a shock down Eddie’s spine. _What you are_. The phrasing itself made Eddie want to run away, but he was stuck still in the course of his dream. “Do you know what happens to boys like you?” The clown asked once more, its cheery disposition seeming to return. Eddie shook his head in his childlike state of fear.

Before Eddie could fully comprehend it, he blinked, and the clown in front of him was replaced by a cowering young man. He looked as frightened as Eddie did, shivering violently as his wet hair dangled into his face. There was a horrific crunching noise, so loud it made Eddie’s ears ring, and before his eyes the man’s chest seemed to burst and cave inwards. Blood spurted from it, angry and red, bone and viscera making itself visible. The man screamed, a high pitched sound, and Eddie matched it. He closed his eyes almost painfully tight, but it was too late; the awful image burned into his head, cementing itself in some corner of his brain to emerge in waking life. Somewhere in the back of his mind the clown was laughing, and when he opened his eyes once more it was before him again, its whole body shaking as it chuckled with a gruesome smile. “Wasn’t that so much fun?” It crooned, and Eddie began to weep.

“Why are you doing this?” He sobbed. He tried to run away, but his feet were seemingly glued to the ground by the force of the dream. The clown did not answer him.

“Let’s go again!” The clown taunted, voice void of anything but pure cruelty.

“No!” Eddie shrieked. It didn’t mean anything. There was a _click!_ inside of his head, like the shutter of a camera, and he blinked once more, tears still spilling from his eyes. In front of him was Richie, in a suit, standing next to a girl in a wedding dress. She had a veil on, and Eddie could not see her face. _It’s Bev it has to be Bev_ , his brain supplied, as though tapping into some sort of primitive jealousy, and his entire chest twinged with a physical heartache. He continued to weep helplessly. Then another _click!_ louder than the first. A middle aged man was standing in front of him now, with a sickly pale face. He was short and thin, and his fluffy hair stood out at odd angles. He looked an awful lot like Eddie himself. The man brought a shaky hand to the rim of his glasses before swallowing hard, a frightened look on his face. He fell to his knees and ropes of thick vomit fell from his mouth steadily, black and sticky-looking like tar. There was gurgling noise somewhere beyond either of them, and Eddie felt himself gag as well.

He continued his futile attempts to run away, pulling both his legs almost painful and he began to hyperventilate. The man fell over onto his stomach, a dull thud on the fake grass of the cemetery. His skin was now beginning to decompose, and as he crawled towards Eddie one of his arms detached itself, laying lifelessly behind him. Eddie screamed; he could not think of a single other thing to do, other than scream and keep trying and trying to free his feet so he could run away. He was successful just as he felt the man’s hand curl around his ankle, cold as a corpse. The suddenness of it caught him; Eddie fell backwards, tumbling onto his back with a little cry of pain. From the ground he could see the engraving on the stones, the message which, in retrospect, he should have known he would find there.

IN MEMORIAM

EDWARD KASPBRAK

1949-1985

“MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON HIS ETERNAL SOUL”

He woke up still screaming, the small mercy of his face being pressed into his pillow saving him from the interference of his mother. He stayed stone still for what felt like an hour, hot tears running down his cheeks. He could not bring himself to move.

He really did want to tell Ben, sweet, understanding Ben who could not have hurt a fly. Perhaps he could have told Ben the full truth, and used that three letter word that so daunted him. But after that dream, he did not tell anyone at all, not that summer and not for the rest of his life.


	2. heaven knows i'm miserable now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"what she asked of me at the end of the day_   
>  _caligula would have blushed_   
>  _'oh, you've been in the house too long', she said_   
>  _and i naturally fled"_

Eddie saw his life in two halves; before and after the summer of 1958. That season itself existed, in his mind, somewhere outside of time. He had the odd sensation of having both missed three months of his life entirely and having experienced more in them than most do in their entire lives. He did not know how to process it as an eleven year old, so he didn’t. When he was old enough, he found had forgotten everything. So it goes.

High school was bad. College was worse. It was perfectly fine, if not the norm, not to be interested in girls as a middle schooler; this was not the case as time went on. Eddie knew how people whispered about him in the halls. It phased him, but just enough so he could still get by. With Bowers and his gang gone, at least he was getting beaten up considerably less. But that sort of thing, even just in words, gets to you, no matter what hell the earth has already put you through. As his mind was shifting and swirling, poisoned by a dread the world instilled in him, his body was changing too; he discovered, with a sort of horror, that his dreams no longer consisted of simply kissing boys. More often than not he looked in the mirror and found that, to himself, he was the most despicable person on earth.

At the same time, the Loser’s Club was beginning to split apart. Bill and Ben left Derry after middle school; Bev and Stan went to the other high school, and probably left Derry  as well sometime soon after, because Eddie did not see them again. Because of this, he, Mike and Richie were closer than before -- for a while, at least. As the memory of that summer began to fade, so did the strength of their companionship. Slowly but surely they grew apart, found other friends (or, at least, Mike and Richie did). Richie got a girlfriend -- that hurt. She was sweet, and Eddie was happy for them, but at the same time he couldn’t help but feel on the verge of tears whenever he saw the two of them together. He felt often that he was a bystander in his own life, that he was watching everyone around him going about things and being happy while he sat frozen in his own odd stasis.

Eddie thought about leaving Derry himself quite often, though he did not have the ability to until he graduated. By his senior year, after Richie had moved, all memories of the summer of 1958 has vanished; Derry was no longer the place of supernatural fear that it was when he was eleven. It had instead become a reminder of everything that was wrong with him, a fever dream of domestic sufferings. He was exhausted by it. He was tired of walking down the same streets, eating at the same places, living in the same house with his mother, who was the same year after year. He was tired after eighteen years of seeing the graffiti littering the Canal, reading KILL ALL QUEERS and FAGS BURN IN HELL and the like, and seven years of knowing it was directed at him. Derry was like a purgatory to him, no longer trying to kill as it had in the past, but still full of an awful energy that overwhelmed him. The thought of dying in Derry was too much. When he got into a New York City college, full ride, he considered it a gift from God himself. His mother was proud of him; it was a nice, but hollow feeling, underscored by his deception of omission. There was a catch to it all, though - Eddie’s mother wanted to move with him. “Finally, we can get out of this town!” She chirped as Eddie drove the two of them to the airport. You win some, you lose some. Eddie knew this. Mike went with them as they were leaving, oddly solemn and silent the entire drive. He did not hug Eddie goodbye, but just waved as he went to the gate. And so left the last remaining member of the Loser’s Club, and so was Mike left to hold down the fort in Derry.

\---

Living in NYC in an apartment with your aging mother was, to Eddie’s surprise, considerably more tolerable than he had thought. He could spend nearly all day on campus, if he wanted to - and he wanted to. He really only needed to go home to sleep and then wake up. She complained bitterly at first, but soon made her own circle of friends, and was placated in that sense. Eddie made a circle of friends, too; no Circle like the Loser’s Club had been, but a welcome grounding force in his life. These friends were kind to him, but something about it was shallow. No one could compare to those six from the summer of 1958, in the end. They had gone too far together. But with only the feeling, and not the memory, Eddie thought he was just being worrisome as always.

But then he had a girlfriend. He was not entirely sure how it happened at all, but it happened. Her name was Rachel -- Eddie wouldn’t realize how funny this was until over a decade later, on a train back into Derry in the middle of the night, slipping into a fit of muffled and wheezing laughter. They met in Intro to Sociology, and then just kept running into one another all over the place. Then they kissed. It was at a party. Eddie didn’t know how it happened (par for the course, it seemed), but she leaned in and pressed her lips to his, and afterwards he said “okay” and so that was that. She was a good friend -- she was loud, and she told a lot of jokes, and she said dumb things sometimes. She reminded him very strongly of someone who was once important to him, but that person’s name and face has left his mind. Eddie often tried to convince himself that he had been too hasty with himself, that he really did love her and that he could live a normal life. But he loved her in his own way, some sort of odd mix of platonic love and respect love and pity love, too. Never romantic love. And this was where the problem started to arise.

Other friends noticed something. Even in their kindness, they spoke without thinking at times, as everyone does. Eddie remembered the moment things went wrong for him again; he was on a double date of sorts, with Rachel and another couple they knew. It was at Rachel’s dorm, and very low key - pizza, a few drinks, fairly standard. It was after those few drinks that the jokes started.

“I’ve never even seen you two hold hands!’ someone crooned.

“You Catholic or something, Rach?” responded someone else. It was all in good nature; none of them wanted to be malicious. They really did like Eddie, even if he didn't always know it. But it put him in an awkward situation - he smiled, though it became more of a grimace, and didn’t say anything. He kept his eye on Rachel, who he could feel starting to burn up beside him. She had a slightly unexpected temper, and was prone to speak her mind when she felt wronged - this often got her in more trouble. Tonight she held her tongue, but Eddie could not help but wait for something to happen, flitting his gaze back to her every few moments.

Rachel’s embittered mood put the slightest damper on the evening, though none noticed or worried about it as much as Eddie. When the event was over, Eddie stayed behind to help clean up; Rachel was oddly quiet, in a way that almost scared him. He wanted to say something to her, but couldn’t find the words. It was she who spoke first, just as he had picked up his bag and was about to leave. “Hey, Eds…” He turned to her, and there was a look on her face he could not decipher. An odd nostalgia overcame him whenever she called him by that nickname; he felt it now as she continued to speak. “Do you maybe wanna stay the night?” She asked it with a sort of uncharacteristic coyness, shifting her weight slightly. Eddie gulped. He was not stupid; he knew what she really meant. He knew also that she meant it because of what had been said earlier that night, but he knew there was no way he could express that he knew this. He was at a loss; he had known this was coming, sometime, but had never really thought of what to do. He knew that this was going to be the end, that she was going to find out somehow, and that all would be over. But he said yes anyway. He didn’t know why.

The pretense they set up was watching a movie in Rachel’s bedroom, a movie Eddie did not know the name of and didn’t bother to learn, knowing he wouldn’t really be watching it. He was overcome with the most profound dread he had ever experienced in his life (or so he could remember). In all his years as a teenage boy, one who thought about sex to the fairly standard degree a teenage boy does (which is to say, _often_ ) he never thought he would actually, you know, _do_ it. It was a combination of cynicism, knowing he would never have a boyfriend, and hope, thinking he could pretend to be straight all good and fine without having to address It, the It that came about in his teenage years and replaced the well-known one. Rachel leaned in and kissed him; he kissed her back, and he lay down on the bed with her on top of him. Only at this point did he realize he didn’t actually know what to do, and another jolt of panic hit his heart. He put his hands on her back, which seemed like a good start, and he closed his eyes.

He knew it was over once his eyes closed. He didn’t re-open them; it was as though he had entered some sort of a trance state. He felt his muscles relax, his fingers slacken slightly. He had read an article the other day about out-of body experiences - feeling as though you disconnect from yourself, watching your actions from outside of yourself. Indeed, Eddie felt as though he were floating somewhere far above himself. And yet at the same time he was grounded this spot, in this shitty dorm room on this second-hand mattress, and that was what was real. He was in this moment, and nothing seemed to exist beyond it.

_I am in Rachel’s bedroom. She is kissing me, and I am kissing her. We are going to have sex._

This he knew, and all was good and well on that front.

_But what do I do? What do I say? Where does it go from here?_

And then, out of the dark behind his eyelids, a sudden memory that was so bright it burned. A summer’s day, in a place he didn’t know (or, perhaps, remember) the name of but felt in his bones. The town, also nameless, stood in the distance. There was a river, and foliage all around him, and a small dam, one he knew (in the memory) that he had built. No, not built; _helped_ build. Because there were people all around him, whose faces were foreign to him but who he knew he loved very, very much, because he was a child again and it was summer and the world was his oyster. And there was a boy facing him, with thick taped-up specs and a too-big varsity jacket and a shit eating grin.

“You know about fucking, don’t you, Eds?”

_Sure,_ Eddie thought emptily to himself, and within the memory his mouth moved. He was entranced by the face of the boy, unknown and yet so oddly familiar that it broke Eddie’s heart. _Who is that?_ He wondered, and he could not shake the thought, growing panicky in his amnesia. He had never seen this memory before, and probably would not have thought it his own if it had come to him at any other time, in any other way. _Who is that? Who is that?_

_…_

_IT’S RI---_

“--Eds?” Rachel’s voice cut through the memory and Eddie’s eyes flew open,  flinching as though awakening harshly from sleep. Rachel stared at him with a look of deep concern. She had taken her shirt off; Eddie hadn’t even seen her do it. “Is something wrong?” Eddie looked into her face, into her eyes behind her thin and unbroken glasses and the place where her grin would have been, and all he could see was the face of the boy in his fleeting memory. He was frightened. He sat upright and they separated, both leaning back on their hands and casting worried glances. Eddie shook his head frantically, as though he were convincing himself as well as her. He said “No” out loud too for good measure. Rachel didn’t seem to believe him: “It’s just, well, you haven’t exactly, uh…” She trailed off, but flicked an almost conspiratorial glance towards Eddie’s crotch. He seized up, face going entirely red, and he lifted his knees (though, as she had pointed out, there was nothing to hide).

“I’m sorry, Rach,” he muttered, swallowing hard. “I’m not really, um…” He looked away from her, grimacing slightly.

She scoffed, a good natured, but harsh sound. “What, are you a homo or something?”

It was a joke. Just a little joke, something to ease the tension that had bubbled up and threatened to spill. But there was just the smallest bead of a genuine question behind it, just enough of a wavering voice and hunched posture. And that was what made all of the difference. Eddie did not say anything; he did not look at her either. A moment, passed, and then another. “Are you?”

The joke was gone now. And then Eddie began to cry, in a way that surprised him; he felt the tears begin to trickle as he spoke. “I really am sorry, Rachel--” he began, but then he was crying too much to really speak. She reacted immediately, but seemed frozen in her spot - as though she wanted to go to him, or hold him, but could not find a way to.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, probably thinking she was too quiet to hear. Eddie continued to weep, feeling raw and far too opened up. They stayed that way for a long time, strained and separated. Then Rachel spoke again, and her voice was gravelly as though she had a sore throat. “Why don’t you go home, Eddie?”

“What?” Eddie said, not because he hadn't heard her, but because he didn’t understand.

“Go _home_! Get out of here!” Her voice spiked to a painful sounding volume, and Eddie jumped up like a cat hearing a vacuum cleaner. He scrabbled off of the bed and stood in the doorway looking at her. He realized as he stared at her hunched over frame that he did not really know anything about her, that she was still an enigma to him, and this, he thought, was the saddest fact of the whole thing. He went home. He got out of there. And as the door was closing, he heard her mutter “Jesus christ, that’s depressing.”

He thought about that as he walked home, across the campus and five city blocks. It took him a long time. He would have to return later, for his car, and that would be hard to do. But for now that did not matter. He thought about what had happened, and what would happen because of it. He thought about his childhood. He thought long and hard about that, and found, with a subtle horror, that he did not remember it at all. The earliest memory he could muster up was of high school, at fifteen, and even that was fuzzy beyond cognition. He could not remember the name of the town he grew up in; he knew it was either in Maine, Massachusetts or New Jersey, but that was about it, and even that took a lot out of him. Worst of all was that he could not remember the boy, and his face hung before him like a friendly ghost, all the walk back home.

\---

It was a setback. Eddie knew that. He and Rachel remained friends, but the weight of what had happened hung over every interaction, and so they drifted apart. It hurt to be near one another for too long. She had another boyfriend, eventually, and then she had a girlfriend, in the odd way that things work out sometimes. Eddie stayed in his strange, unnatural state, and that was fine too. He did not forget, but he adjusted. The event became ingrained in the timeline of himself and, in some likely imperceptible way, changed a bit of him. Slowly, but steadily, confidence began to build inside of him once more, that glowing flower within blooming once more.

The year after he graduated, he walked past a downtown shop and saw something that made him slow down. It was a small store, tucked flat into the wall almost invisible, and he probably would have passed it by if he were somebody else, or if he were in a different state of mind. But in the dark and slightly grimy window of the shop sat a small sticker in the shape of a pink triangle. Eddie wasn’t stupid. He knew what it meant. In a shoebox under his bed there was a pile of newspaper clippings, a veritable working history of the still-emerging gay rights movement. Whenever his mother would scoff at an article, and toss the Sunday paper in the recycling bin, he would retrieve it and look through. Just in case. This was his small act of rebellion. And so he walked into the shop, albeit very quickly and nervously, and bought the sticker. He felt terribly out of place, he in his chauffeur suit and dress shoes and terrible posture, and he did not make eye contact with the man (or perhaps the woman; he could not tell) at the counter. But he bought it. He did not stick it on anything (he was still too terribly afraid for that), but he put it in the shoebox, and often he took it out and looked at it, and he would smile.

His mother sat him down at the kitchen table, a year later, and asked him why he was not yet married. She was not as blunt as that, but Eddie knew her well enough to see the point behind her tone. They sat at the kitchen table, Eddie picking at his eggs and his mother frowning at the newspaper he would later fish out of the recycling bin in his usual routine. Then she looked up and spoke, in her high voice that was thinning with age: “What ever happened to that nice girl Rachel?”

“We broke up, ma,” Eddie replied, perhaps sounding a little more sullen than he intended to. His mother scoffed a little.

“What? When?”

Eddie hesitated a bit at this; he had told her before, he knew, but did not know if she was playing dumb or simply old. “When I was still at school. It’s been a long time.”

She put the paper down at this, and Eddie gulped slightly. “I’m awfully worried about you, Eddie. All you do is work! You never go out. You need to meet people!”

What she really meant was that he needed to meet girls. Eddie knew plenty of people: people from work, friends from college and the like. His mother knew that. And he did go out, though _that_ she did not know. Eddie kept his mouth shut, a tactic he’d learned over the years that worked better than speaking up to her. His mother sighed, a hollow whistle of a sound. “Haven’t you ever thought about, you know, finding a nice girl and just settling down? I mean, that window is going to close for you before you know it!” She shifted awkwardly, seeming to settle deeper into her wooden chair. “And I’d like some grandchildren, Eddie. I’m growing old, and--”

“Stop, stop,” Eddie muttered abruptly, which seemed to throw his mother off. She had taken to bringing up her death as a new guilt-trip, and, for the first time, it was a tactic of hers he was unwilling to stomach.

“I’m serious! You’re an only child, so the Kaspbrak line ends with you. If you don’t--”

“I said stop!” It came out louder and much harsher than Eddie intended. His mother stopped. She looked to him as though she were about to cry.

“Don’t do that, Eddie. I hate it when you raise your voice like that.” Her voice was thin and strained, seeking comfort. In an earlier year, an earlier decade, he would have given her that comfort, extended the pity she thrived off of. But now, all he felt was...annoyed. He got up from the table, slowly, and walked away. He didn’t say anything more. His mother did not ask him about getting married again. For the first time in his life, he had won against her.

Eddie celebrated this victory over the span of the next year by going out more. In his adulthood, he had become like a teenager: rebellious, sneaking out, resentful of authority in his life. It had simply taken a few more years to kick in for him, it seemed.  He was sure this had some sort of implication, something or other that would come up on a therapist’s couch somewhere. But in the moment, he was too exhilarated by this newfound sense of urgency, of excitement, and most of all of non-consequence. Among work friends and college friends there was a third circle of Eddie Kaspbrak’s acquaintances: people he met in bars. Very specific bars which all shared a very specific clientele. He had a system where he told his mother that he had a job to run, or that he was staying over with a friend, or some other reason he had to be out of the house for a long time late at night. Sometimes these things were even true. But then he would head into the city to his usual haunts.

He became somewhat of a recurring figure, a presence of the small but lively gay bar scene in New York City. He was friendly, and talked to people often. Those around him seemed to enjoy his being there. But he was also somewhat of an odd figure, too. He said that he was straight, though he was certain no one believed him. Eddie couldn’t quite figure out what exactly prompted him to do this, in such a space where it seemed unnecessary; he rationalized it by fear, of someone finding out or of being seen, but really it was fear of himself. He did not drink, either, for the same reason. He couldn’t bear to risk letting his guard down, removing his inhibitions and possibly doing something he wanted to do. And it hurt, it hurt often. He would meet a man, and they would become friends, and nearly more, but then he would have to inhibit himself. It was the sickest sort of habit. He was certain that others around him knew this as well. He was filled with the odd, but comforting sense of being pitied by an entire subculture. This comfort, over time, made him braver and braver.

He was stupidly brave a year later, standing in a stall of a bowling alley men’s room and tapping his foot nervously on the tile. He had grown sick of his own cowardice, grown too jealous of everyone around him who danced together and kissed one another, while he sat oddly silent at an adjacent table. He was determined to get It over with, the new It that had so previously daunted him. Over time he picked up bits of code, phrases to say and clothes to wear and places to go to make It happen. And while he nodded along to this and tried not to look too interested, in his mind he was taking meticulous notes. His fear started to become overshadowed by an all consuming curiosity.

But now that he was really _here_ , biding his time until something happened, the fear was back and stronger than ever before. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he was quickly discovering that this wasn’t it. The room was silent, save for the buzz of a florescent light that was entirely too loud. The tile and walls were a shade of blue that caused an ache behind his eyeballs, deep within his skull. Above the sinks there was a framed drawing of a vase of flowers, and when he saw it he laughed, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. The stall seemed to him more of a coffin. He felt nauseous. Even in the sickly heat within the bathroom goosebumps were beginning to break over Eddie’s arms.

It was wrong for him to be here. That concept, though perhaps untrue, stuck onto Eddie’s psyche like glue and ran over and over. Who was he to feel like he could do this? Was it because he was sad? Because he was lonely, oh, because he was so crushingly lonely? But he knew that there were lots of lonely people in the world, and almost none of them ended up standing in bowling alley men’s rooms and tapping their feet nervously on the tile. If they did, why would he still be alone now?  A part of his heart was poisoned: poisoned by time, by history, by his mother. This part spoke up now, and it had a voice that was not his own. _You’ll always be alone, Eddie, because people like you always are. Sure, you can come here for a fuck, but what happens afterwards? You go home to where you live with your mother, and then you’re alone again._ He had gone in over his head this time, and he was going to pay the price, because what if he wasn’t even in the right place after all? What if someone walked in, and he opened the door, and he realized he’d gotten the address wrong? What if it was a cop, oh, ladies and gentlemen, what if it was a cop? What if Eddie opened the door, standing five foot two in his repulsive effeminacy, a handkerchief hanging limply from his right jacket pocket like a death sentence, and it was a fucking cop?

_Then what happens is that the fuzz ring up my darling, dearest, eighty-year-old mother and tell her that her sweet baby Eddie got caught trying to play baseball at Cat’s Alley Bowling and Pinball Complex. But the real question is, does she have the aneurysm before or after she sees me sitting in the station?_

His chest was beginning to seize up now, a painful burn at the back of his throat. He quickly fumbled in a pocket for his inhaler, a wheeze racking through him and his fingers scratched the small square of foil he had brought for his original purpose. _Jesus, what did I think I was doing? I don’t know anything!_ He fumbled with the lock as he put the inhaler in his mouth, his hands clammy. The door of the stall closed harshly as he left, making a loud _bang!_ and causing Eddie to jump. He stood vacantly in the black lights of the bowling alley, his face red, certain that everyone was staring at him and everyone could tell what he had nearly done. He felt at once extremely exhausted, more so than he had ever felt before; he went home and slept a dreamless sleep.

\---

It was strange, the way it happened. In an odd out-of-body way, Eddie had been certain that this experience would be an end of some sort, that his emerging sense of identity was one inciting incident away from getting shoved into a closet (in more ways than one). On the contrary, it was as if in sleep his mind had reset, taken in the information and then had no more use for it. He woke with a dull ache somewhere within him, the last drudges of a memory, but that was all. There was a space where some feeling should have been, where the shame and anxiety he had felt would settle in more permanently, but nothing was there. It was a new day.

He was still reserved, in his characteristic way. But now it was with a sort of knowledge, a kind of self-awareness that was comforting rather than frightening. It radiated a warmth like a fireplace. He felt secure in his reserved nature. There was, perhaps, a hint of melancholy to it, but it now felt poetic rather than overwhelming as it had. He had a nostalgia not for what he had experienced, but what he could not experience. He kept living his life much as he had, and it made him happy. He did not wish for more. The years went by in this happy constant, and a confidence began to build him again out of the routine. He found himself able to talk to men without guilt hanging over him like a harbinger of doom. He let himself get crushes for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, and though they felt silly and were never acted on he indulged in the experience of infatuation. In one of his regular haunts, someone kissed him on the cheek as the new year rang in: 1981. He never knew who it was, but he was grinning the rest of the night and well into the next day. He saw it as an omen -- this was going to be the year, he was certain, that he came out for good.

Seven months later, something terrible happened.

It began for Eddie in a cruelly domestic way, at the breakfast table with his mother scoffing at the news. He raised his head in his Pavlovian response, his heart skipping a tentative beat. But on this day, unlike any other day before, Eddie’s mother raised her head back, turning the paper ever so slowly around so he could see the article headline: RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS.

“Take a look at this, Eddie,” his mother muttered. Eddie was taking a look, and his stomach dropped with a physical pain. “I can’t honestly say I’m surprised. When you scorn God, He scorns you back, that what I’ve always believed. It must be so terrible for their families--”

“Hey, ma, could I read that?” Eddie cut in, his voice strained. His lungs contracted harshly in his impending attack, and he tried to play it cool as his questioned finished in a wheeze. His mother nodded and handed him the paper as he just about sprinted upstairs on the brink of hyperventilating.

He read the article quick as a flash, as though he feared it would self destruct in his hands. He struggled to believe it; it felt as if the universe had custom tailored a nightmare scenario. Almost as soon as his eyes took in the last sentence, he darted into the hall bathroom and promptly stripped, searching manically for the violet spots the article had described. None made themselves apparent, which soothed him in the slightest. It was a compulsory action, and it made him feel stupid, but at the same time he was a slave to his hypochondriac nature. “Kaposi’s Sarcoma. Jesus fucking Christ,” he murmured under his breath, and then he began to cry. He was frightened, certain he was going to die and that he would become a laughing-stock after that happened. He was so frightened that his whole body shook. He racked his brain violently for what his plan would be if he got sick, and could come up with nothing. After all, who could he go to? Not a doctor. Not his mother. His friends at the bar? But they were going to die, too, yes, everyone he knew would die and then he would too, and with this thought his tears came more roughly and threatened to choke him. _Why now, God, why now? Everything is over now!_ And then he thought about everyone who had already died, and how selfish he was, and cried even more.

To say he stopped going out entirely would be a misinterpretation. He still had his weekly routine, but it was now tinged with a sort of fear, wondering who would be there and who would not. Sometimes the anxiety of that would twist his stomach into a knot until he thought he would surely vomit, or make his chest seize with the familiar pain of his asthma. But he still went, though he couldn’t discern why. A sense of duty, perhaps, to see things through, or some sort of masochistic impulse. Or perhaps he couldn’t really believe it til he saw it; that unless he knew empirically that his life was over, that something was terribly wrong and could never be fixed, it simply wouldn’t be true. It didn’t happen right away, of course, and he retroactively felt more than a little dumb for thinking that might be the case. But it happened. The people around him were dying, first in ones and twos, then tens and twenties, the way a light drizzle turns into a downpour. He once opened the door to a bar and found a ghost town inside; music was playing, the lights were going, but not a soul was there except the bartender, gaunt and frail and idly cleaning a glass no one would use. Eddie shut the door again with a heavy knot in his stomach, one which never really went away.

He went only to one funeral, though he was invited to many (even if ‘invited’ felt like the wrong word and put a funny feeling in his mouth saying it). He often had work, or other obligations, and in his paranoid mind thought that going to too many funerals in this day and age would bring suspicion to him. But he went to one. The man’s name was Robert Sauer: he was twenty seven years old, and he was from Germany. This was all Eddie would ever learn about him. He also happened to be the man who kissed Eddie on the cheek, on the first day of the end of the world, but Eddie didn’t know this, and never would. The ceremony took place in the basement of a close friend’s apartment building, under the guise of a safety inspection. Eddie later learned, from a whispering but furious woman with buzzed short hair and snake bite lip piercings, that no church would take them. It was short and sweet, but tinged with a profound sort of sadness. Eddie wept openly, but could not put a finger on exactly why. He had tried to write a eulogy, but after nearly half a legal pad of paper scribbled upon and crumpled he had given up. It was a Sisyphean task, writing a eulogy for a man you did not know. As well write a eulogy for yourself. It _felt_ far too much.

And so life for Eddie Kaspbrak became a bold and dashing responsibility. Sure, many times he thought of what it would be like to die. He wished it, on occasion, lingering in crosswalks or standing with his toes over the yellow line at the subway station. But he wanted to accept it passively. He knew he couldn’t just kill himself; it would have felt disrespectful, to all those he knew who had died. He either had to die of the disease, or in some kind of accident. He prayed each night for the latter. But as the years went on, and more and more information came into light, he realized (in an admittedly _very_ postponed way) that he was not going to die. After all, he didn’t do drugs. He didn’t have sex; he hardly even touched other men. He was probably the safest gay man in the entirety of New York City. He realized this in the middle of the night, waking with a gasp from a dream he did not remember, and it was as if an angel had tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped out of his bed as though it were on fire, then stood in the middle of his room, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Then he got dressed, walked to the corner store, bought a bottle of whiskey and drank the entirety.

In the end, it was one specific thing that settled him back, at least to some degree, into a normal life (if any time where death doesn’t hound one’s soul can be used as a threshold for normal). He walked in the city, as he did nearly every day of his life, and he saw a poster that had been plastered to a wall. It was a black poster, with white text: SILENCE = DEATH. In its center sat that pink triangle, much like the one that still sat cozy in Eddie’s shoebox, which now stared him down as though to ask him a question. It was Chekhov's gun, he supposed; if you make a move in the first act, it must stare you down in the second, after all those you share commonality with lay in their graves and you walk alone down the city block. He stood contemplating it longer than he thought he should have, reading those simple words over and over again. It entranced him. It felt like an ultimatum.

He had made a choice to stay silent, he supposed. One day, he would die. And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh guess this is a three part story now haha


	3. i know it's over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I know it's over,_   
>  _And it never really began,_   
>  _But in my heart it was so real"_

The human mind craves routine, much like a livestock animal might crave salt. This is how Eddie felt, at least. And despite the crushing weight of what he had experienced in his life, the unalterable sadness he now carried, he was, to the best of his ability, happy. He just lived his life, didn’t make a scene of himself, and so each day blended into the next with little barrier between them, like a lucid dream of mundanity. It could have gone on like that forever, if not for that damn phone call.

The phone hardly ever rang in the Kaspbrak household, and when it did, it was usually for his mother. He probably hadn’t touched it in two, three months when the call arrived. It was a stroke of luck, terrible, disgusting luck, that he just so happened to pick up the phone on this day at this time. He did it so casually, too, leaning against the kitchen counter with the receiver in one hand.

“Hello?”

“Eddie?” The voice was rough, tired sounding, but perking up with a dawning shock. Eddie had never heard it before in his life. “It’s Mike Hanlon.” The name held no meaning for Eddie. It hung in the air for maybe ten seconds, untethered by context. And then the voice said “Mike Hanlon from Derry,” and it was as though a dam had suddenly burst. 

_ (ta ta boys it really was a baby dam) _

The first thing Eddie did after the phone call, once he was capable of putting one foot in front of the other again and no longer stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen, was begin to pack. He went to the medicine cabinet first; he felt like that meant something, but was too tired to know or care exactly what. He stared up at the cabinet for a long, long time, trembling like a leaf caught in the wind. He knew he either had to take all these pills or put them in his bag. There was no middle ground, not with this. He had promised he’d come back, the sort of promise you put your life on. Which means you keep it, or you die.

In an act of bravery that surprised him, Eddie chose the former.

His mother heard him - he supposed with how badly he was shaking, the rattling and clinking of various bottles must have roused her suspicion. “Eddie?” she called out from the hall. “What’s all that noise?” 

“Nothing, Ma,” he answered, his voice then and tense. This didn’t appease her; she walked up to the door and pounded her fist against it. 

“What are you doing in there?” 

This he did not answer to, simply hastening his pace and opening the door of the bathroom. He hoped his mother was a smart enough woman to see his suitcase and anxious demeanor and know what he meant to do, and he was right: “What’s this all about?” 

“I have to go away for a little while.” 

His mother frowned, her anxious, maternal frown that had grown deeper set in age. “Where on earth could you have to go? This late at night?”

Eddie took a deep breath. “I’m going back to Derry.”

Saying the name of the town was like evoking that of a long resting ghost. The whites of his mother’s eyes seemed to widen, turning her elderly frame even more skeletal in appearance. He knew that she, too, was just now remembering. These memories were not so fond, it seemed, as her face contorted into a grimace. “Derry? Why on earth would you want to go back to a dreadful place like that?”

It took a while for Eddie to think of this himself. “I have to.” He didn’t realize how absurd it sounded until he voiced it out loud. 

“But why?” His mother again prompted, seeming helpless. “Why?” He did not have an answer for her. He stared with his wide eyes, and started walking out the door, and that was his answer. A feeling deep in the pit of his stomach wormed up painfully, whispering that he would never see her again, that he should go back and apologize, or at the very least say a proper goodbye. He ignored his, which was his first mistake. 

He did not remember much of the journey into Derry: he got on the train, seemed to fall asleep (or otherwise exit conscious thought), and then he was there. Like magic, he thought, and felt profoundly like a child. He gazed upon the town with numb eyes; everything was so desperately familiar, ingrained in the surface of his very being, at yet at the same time new and unyieldingly strange. These feelings met like two mirrored soundwaves, each cancelling the other out and leaving Eddie in stifling silence. Everything old was new again, and everything new alien. He kept a tally of what had changed in his head, as he rode solemn in the taxi to Jade of the Orient, until the pointless task gave him a headache and he stopped. 

He hadn’t prepared himself adequately to see the others. Hearing Mike’s voice over the phone had been nearly enough to knock him out. Seeing his face was even worse, the sight of that tired smile set in that  _ face _ that was now so much older and yet somehow exactly the same. Eddie’s lungs felt like a brown paper bag being harshly crumpled, and he stumbled into Jade of the Orient scrambling furiously for his aspirator. Mike laughed in a good natured sound as Eddie collapsed into his seat, looking around at the near empty table: he had been the first to arrive.

“Don’t do that,” Eddie muttered once he managed to catch his breath somewhat, glancing at and away from Mike’s face in staccato bursts. He felt as though he simultaneously could not bear to look at Mike and could not bear to possibly look away.

“Don’t do what?” Mike asked, a deeply lined frown on his face.

“Don’t laugh like that. You sound exactly the same,” Eddie’s face broke into a wide grin he could not keep off of his face, and Mike ended up mirroring it. Eddie looked at him now, looked for real at all that had changed and all that was so achingly familiar. It seemed a revelation to him, and as they spoke silent tears pours down his cheeks. Mike didn’t mention it.

It was Bev who came next, followed shortly by Ben as Mike walked to and from the front of the restaurant at a forced steady pace. Eddie was the most surprised by the two of them. He had seen in his mind’s eye a version of Bev that was nearly the same, simply older and less pre-pubescent. The shock he received seeing the styled hair and gold earrings framing that familiar face made his lungs pinch in disbelief, and he set his aspirator on the table, knowing he’d need it soon enough. Ben, too, seemed different beyond belief, a slim specter of his pudgy eleven year old self. Had Eddie passed him on the street in Derry, not seeing his face, he would never have dreamed of recognizing him, and this thought sat with odd weight on his shoulders. Most of all he was overwhelmed by the love he felt then, the pure and simple love of seeing those old friends once again. He hadn’t felt anything quite like it in a while, and it burned so bright it nearly hurt.

And then Richie showed up. Eddie nearly fell out of his chair, his insides feeling like someone had run a jackhammer. He tried to break down what he was feeling, put it into words or manageable chunks inside of his brain, but was at a loss. Indeed, as Richie took the seat beside him and ruffled his hair, slipping quickly back into their old jokes an routines, Eddie found himself at a complete and utter loss for words. After all, what the hell are you supposed to say?  _ Hey, Rich, I’ve been in love with you for twenty goddamn years? Hey, Rich, I’ve been dreaming about you nearly every night, but I only now recognize your face? _ These things frightened him terribly. That was the It that preoccupied his mind at the moment: the It of a lifetime crush. In lieu of those frightening thoughts he opted instead to smile dopily and get himself caught up, on everything and anything his brain could perceive about the twenty eight years in which he had been asleep. 

Bill arrived, and made six. Only six. There was an empty seat at the table, a painfully incomplete reservation for seven, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Each of them would look at it, swallowing painfully, and look away just as quickly. There was a sort of belated expectation of that reality, that of course it was bound to happen, but not to Stan. Nobody thought it would have been Stan; far too messy for the Stan they’d known a lifetime ago. Eddie had thought it would have been himself. Looking at that empty chair, he wondered if, in the remembering that must have spurred that act, Stan had remembered Eddie kissing him, so fleetingly but still so pointedly. That useless, irrelevant thought was the thin wax paper atop a catastrophic pit of deeper and darker ones. It did its job well enough. Life pushed regretfully on, even as that empty chair threatened to swallow all into itself like some dreadful black hole.

The question of a woman in Eddie’s life took him by surprise, though he knew it shouldn’t have. It was a normal thing to ask, a normal thing to have an answer to, and so his unpreparedness made him feel like an alien pretending to be human and failing marvelously. It was Richie who had asked it, a nail in some sort of linguistic coffin. “How about you, Eddie?” he had added to an ongoing conversation about marriage, ruffling Eddie’s hair once again as he did so.

“Me?” Eddie had at first responded, a little bewildered, before shaking his head a bit and answering. “I’m, uh, seeing this wonderful woman,” he lied, his cheeks flushing. It was an old impulse, that variety of lie, bubbling up once more like so many things had in the last twenty four hours. No one pushed any further, a small blessing, but Bev gave him the strangest look...as though she were confused. Her small blue eyes were narrow and inquisitive, like a cat’s.

_ That’s right, because I told her, didn’t I? In my weird stilted way I told her. She knows, and she remembered. _

He was struck, then, by the concept of consequence. In a sense he had avoided the consequences of his actions, through virtue of forgetting. Now everything was going to come back, at once, all at once. It probably wouldn’t even take more than one day. He shiv ered violently and pushed the thought away, deeper and deeper into the back of his head, until the fortune cookies came and until the circle closed and until everything  _ came back _ . Then to push the thought away was effectively suicide, and to let it fester in the foreground of his mind was to die. He thought sweetly of Stan the Man and chose the latter.

Going back down into the sewers was like getting in line for a roller coaster, and it was like going to a funeral. Eddie heart took up residence in his throat as they approached. He wanted to hold someone’s hand, like he was a kid crossing the street again. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. What he could bring himself to do, however, was speak up in his strained and heavy voice as they trudged along in silence. They had reached the door; it felt like an ultimatum. “Wait,” he said, and the rest turned to him, so he had to think of something to actually say. He had been so overcome by the need to  _ say _ , to say anything, that the  _ what _ seemed to take a backseat. There were a million things he wanted to say; at the same time, a million things he didn’t dare say.

“I have to tell you guys something. Before we go in there, that is.” He sighed, as though he’d prepared a formal speech. He knew, on a factual level, what he had to say:  _ I’m gay _ . But even now, even thirty fucking years later, even after all the shit he’d already been through back in Derry, that good old familiar fear chomped him up. His hands were clammy. He felt nauseous. Because the very thought of saying those two words, of moving his lips, making that sound come out, was still so frightening to him. Because he thought that the sight of their faces all falling, their eyes averting, would kill him. Because he was still a coward. He was still the same old coward he’d always been.

“I’ve been lying.” Eddie watched them react with wide eyes, like a deer in headlights. Even as he said it he chastised himself in his mind.  _ Just say it! Just fucking say it! ‘I’m gay’! ‘I’m a homosexual’! It’s really that easy just SAY IT!  _

“About what?” Ben said, in such a concerned voice that Eddie almost started crying. 

“When I said I was seeing someone?” he began, averting his eyes, “Well, I’m not.” It was a confusing half-truth, and he grimaced as he knew he’d have to elaborate. “In fact, I haven’t ever -- I mean, I’ve never even  _ been _ with anyone.” It was an embarrassing thing to say. His mouth felt like it was running a mile ahead of his brain. He expected someone to laugh, to crack a joke, but it didn’t come. His lip quivered on the verge of tears.

“Eddie, Eddie, what are you saying? You’re a virgin?” Richie cut in, somewhere between harsh and reassuring. He failed to accomplish the latter. 

Eddie swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“Well, I can’t help you with that, pal, but, thanks for sharing.” Eddie gave a nervous laugh, an involuntary noise created by his fear. He had made a mistake, and he knew it by the confusion he heard in Richie’s voice. 

“Richie, let him talk,” Bev scolded gently, walking briskly to Eddie’s side. She understood what he had been trying to say, even in his roundabout way of saying it. She put a hand on his shoulder, intimate yet so purely friendly, and that’s when Eddie began to cry.

“You see, I could never sleep with somebody that I didn’t---love---” he sniffled, leaning into Bev’s shoulder. “And I’ve never really loved anyone...except you guys.” He closes his eyes, giving a deep shuddering breath. That was it. That was the closest he’d ever get to the truth. But it was enough. It felt like a release, some kind of bad energy seeping out of him with the words.

“Hey,” Richie said quietly, his face taking on a softer expression. He, too, put a hand on Eddie’s other shoulder. Eddie’s heart raced at the touch, followed by the familiar guilt he’d carried since he was a boy. Bill took a step closer, as if wanting to touch him, but his hands were full of a lantern and a flashlight. Ben looked on from a distance, not coming close but comforting with his eyes; it made sense, Eddie thought. After all, he was the only one who hadn’t learned anything. They didn’t say anything else to one another after that, giving Eddie a moment to compose himself before filing into that door. Eddie felt the moment echo through his bones, filling him with an odd strength.  _ I’m ready to die now,  _ he thought,  _ I’m not afraid. I’ll hang on to that as my very last memory. _

It was that strength, he thought in ironic retro-cognition, that made him put one foot in front of the other and walk up to the Spider with his fists curled. He did it even though every cell in his body screamed for him not to, screamed for him to duck and hide and let everything play out. He did it because Bill at that moment was laying on the ground, bleeding, and because at that moment Richie was staring the Spider right in the eyes and standing very still, and because he couldn’t see Ben or Bev because his vision was blurring, tunneled so that only the Spider held his gaze. He did it because no one else was doing it, and became he was not afraid to die. He gripped his aspirator in his good hand, his childhood belief in the power of that medicine coursing through his veins once more, and he screamed as he charged at the thing. “Here! Take THIS!”

He sprayed It in the face and heard It’s scream, one bulging red eye now speckled with white acid dots. He struck It with his good hand, over and over, as though he were outside of his body. It was a primal feeling, of fear, of anger, and of determination. He hardly noticed as his arm slid deep into the Spider’s slick, gaping maw, his hand working of its own accord as he sprayed the aspirator deep into It’s throat. But then It’s jaws closed, and he heard the crunch of bone, and then he was falling, falling onto the damp floor with a stinging thud. 

There was no pain. No pain at all. There was everything, and nothing, all at once. He lay on the ground and looked up, blankly, feeling the dizzy sensation of blood oozing from the stump of his arm. He heard Richie stumble towards him across the stone, shouting in a panicked stream of consciousness.

“----Eds oh my god Eds someone get over here Bill Ben do something he’s lost his arm his----”

And then he heard Bill getting up from where he lay, scrabbling his way over to Eddie as though his life depended on it. He saw Bev’s face, crying, close to his own as she took off her blouse and tried it around his wound. It was a pointless action: he knew he was going to die. He didn’t care much.

And then Richie’s face was looming over him, crying, too, seeming so lost and frightened. Eddie smiled at him, almost dreamily, and whispered his name. “Richie.”

“What?” came the immediate reply. Richie seemed aimless, fidgeting around with his hands as though he wanted to take Eddie into his arms and hold him there. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but Eddie wished he’d do it anyway.

_ I love you, Richie. Then and now. It was always you, never anyone else. I tried to tell you before, I really did. In another place, another time, I would have told you. I would have told you that it was always you, never anyone else. I loved you from the start. And when we were in high school and we talked about kissing girls, I was really thinking about kissing you. Always you. _

Eddie didn’t say any of this. 

Instead he used the rest of his strength to look up at Richie, stare into the eyes of the face he’d loved for nearly his entire life, and smile. He lifted his remaining hand weakly to stroke Richie’s cheek. “Don’t call me Eds,” he murmured, and he would have laughed if he’d felt like there were any air left in his lungs. “You know I...I…”

He gave one last, shaky breath, and fell silent. His hand slipped off of Richie's face and onto the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"Oh, Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head_   
>  _And as I climb into an empty bed_   
>  _Oh well. Enough said."_


End file.
